


The Tide is High

by jeeno2



Series: Reylo Multichapters [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Miscommunication, Soulmates, Wedding Planning, Weddings, no cheating happens in this story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:00:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25391278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/pseuds/jeeno2
Summary: “The truth is… I figured I didn't have a soulmate.” Ben clears his throat. “I’m thirty-five years old, and…”He trails off, not finishing the thought.“I never thought I’d find a soulmate, either,” Rey admits.--------------(Or: After years of waiting, Rey Johnson’s soulmate mark finally shows up--when Ben Solo and his fiancee arrive at her wedding planning office.)
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Reylo Multichapters [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559581
Comments: 668
Kudos: 1481
Collections: Reylo Prompt Fills (@reylo_prompts)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mcal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcal/gifts).



> This is in response to a prompt from [reylo_prompts](https://twitter.com/reylo_prompts/status/1232128949280497665/) from a few months back: “Ben and Rey’s soulmate marks show up when Ben and his fiancee arrive at wedding planner Rey’s office.” Mcal requested it aaaages ago as part of a follower giveaway on twitter. And so here we are. :)
> 
> This will be angstier than my usual fare but a happy ending is guaranteed. Also, just as a heads-up, there will be no physical infidelity of any kind in this fic. 
> 
> This fic is about a third written already--and so at least at first the updates will be weekly.

Rey’s client stares down at the two different fabric swatches she just placed in front of her and bites her lip, concentrating hard.

“The blue one,” Kaydel finally says, tentatively, after a minute’s indecision. She taps the fabric she’s picked with a finger. “I like the blue.”

“Kaydel,” Rose says, with the patience Rey suspects her friend usually uses with her kindergarten students. She puts a hand on her fiancee’s arm. “They’re both blue, hon.”

Kaydel peers at Rose, then looks skeptically back down at the swatches on the counter. “They are?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure that one isn’t purple?” Kaydel points at the fabric she didn’t pick.

Rose nods. “Dead sure.”

One look at the scowl on Kaydel’s face and Rey has to bite the inside of her cheek to remind herself to stay professional instead of dissolving into giggles. 

“Hm.” Rey leans in closer and pretends to consider the fabrics. One is satin and the other is silk, but both of them are definitely blue; just different shades. The point of this exercise had been to help Kaydel pick between two different types of fabric, not colors. 

“They are both  _ rather _ blue,” Rey says, not unkindly. “But I do think the one Kaydel picked has more blue undertones in it than the other one.” Rey’s just making things up at this point, but phrasing it this way will make it seem like she’s agreeing with both brides. Rey learned quickly that half her job in this business is diplomacy; most of the rest of it is making her customers think she’s on their side. Which, of course, she is. Always. She points to the swatch Kaydel selected. “Is this the one you’d both like to go with?”

“Yes,” Kaydel says right away.

“I like it too,” Rose agrees. “It’ll look great with the venue, and with Paige’s complexion.” She lifts a hand and brushes a stray lock of Kaydel’s blonde hair away from her face. In the process, the long sleeve of Rose’s loose-fitting cream sweater slips halfway down her arm, exposing the pale outline of her soulmark on the inside of her wrist. It’s a perfect, miniature likeness of the shape of Kaydel’s smile.

_ Lovely _ , Rey thinks, and means it, unable to stop herself from smiling, too. 

“You’re in luck,” Rey says, gathering up the fabric samples and putting them back into her book. “The dress designer loves that one too. I’m, like, ninety-nine percent sure he’ll be able to get you the bridesmaid dresses you ordered in that fabric by next month.” 

Rose turns to Kaydel. “That should give the girls plenty of time for any alterations they might need.”

“Yeah,” Kaydel agrees. She looks at Rey and says, “Thank you! We’ll go with the blue.”

Rey ignores Rose’s snort of amusement. She grins at both women. “The blue it is.”

* * *

After Kaydel and Rose leave, Rey flops down in the metal folding chair she keeps in her little cramped cubbyhole of a back office and heaves out a heavy, tired sigh. 

As if on cue, the telephone on her cluttered desk rings once, twice--and while under normal circumstances she would rush to answer it before the end of the second ring, right now she’s absolutely exhausted from weeks of wedding season craziness. Taking yet another phone call from yet another frantic client is the last thing she wants to do.

She loves her job. More than that; she  _ lives _ for her job. It’s an avocation, not just a vocation, is what she always tells her friends. But not right now it isn’t. No, right now, it’s almost seven o’clock in the evening and she hasn’t eaten anything in more than ten hours. She’s starving and exhausted and in desperate need of a night off from other people’s wedding-day plans and worries and disasters. 

As Finn tells her as often as he can, she deserves a moment to herself now and again, too.

It’s with the memory of Finn’s caring, worried voice in her ear that Rey decides to let this particular call go to voicemail. Whoever it is will leave her a message if it’s important. They always do. 

Whatever it is can wait until morning.

It’s difficult for Rey to put her finger on exactly what it is about running this business that she finds so rewarding. It was only eighteen months ago that she left a good engineering job with a great salary to start up “Not Alone Wedding Planning” on what was basically a whim. Those eighteen months have been the busiest, most frantic period of her life so far--and on paper, there is nothing about what she does for a living that  _ should _ appeal to someone like her. She has a Master’s degree in civil engineering, she’s nearly thirty, and she’s still unmarried. More than that: she’s still hopelessly unmatched, without even a single fucking tingle on the inside of her wrist to give her hope that one day, her circumstances in that particular department might change.

Really, she understands why her friends don’t get why she does this.

And yet, for some reason Rey cannot put into words, helping people plan their weddings has been some of the most fulfilling work she has ever done. More rewarding than getting her Master’s degree. Far more rewarding than all that work she did for Skywalker Industries’ important clients. There’s just something about the happiness she sees on her customers’ faces after she puts the finishing touches on the day of their dreams. The little looks they give one another as they go over every detail one last time; the soulmark touches and private smiles they share with each other as they leave her office, her plans for them in hand.

Finn told her once that she only went into this business to fill the void in her life left by never having had a family of her own. And maybe he’s right about that. It wouldn’t be the first time Finn was right about something important. But right now, she’s enjoying herself professionally more than she ever has before, bringing this kind of intimate joy into others’ lives. 

One day, when she finally gets around to getting health insurance for herself again and seeing a therapist, maybe she’ll work through all this with them. But that’s a “tomorrow problem,” as Finn would say. Right now, her phone has finally stopped ringing. Right now, all she wants to do is go home, climb into her bathtub, and go to bed.

Everything else can wait until later.

* * *

Rey is so lost in daydreams about her comfy sofa and the  _ Love Island _ episodes waiting for her at home that it takes longer than it otherwise would for her to realize she isn’t alone in the shop. She misses the loud jangle of bells over the front door entirely as well as the insistent, repeated pressing of the buzzer she keeps on the front desk to alert her to clients’ arrivals.

It’s only when she hears a deep, commanding male voice saying something to a quieter, more subdued female voice that she realizes there are people in her waiting room, waiting for her.

Rey frowns. She doesn’t think she had an appointment set for tonight--mostly because she never sets appointments this late. She hastily rummages through the sandwich wrappers and soda cans on her desk until she finds her planner. It’s not like her to forget about an appointment--but then again, business has been insane lately.

She quickly thumbs through her planner until she comes to the page for today, and quickly sees she was right. Her last scheduled appointment was the five o’clock with Kaydel and Rose. And they left over an hour ago.

There’s nobody who’s supposed to be in this shop right now.

Frowning, Rey plucks her glasses off the top of her desk and quickly slides them on her face. 

When she gets to her waiting room several very important things happen all at once.

First, the air in the room… changes, somehow. She couldn’t describe how, exactly, if she tried. It’s subtle--not the kind of thing someone who hadn’t spent about twelve hours every day, six days a week, in here would probably even notice. But she  _ has _ spent almost all of her waking life in this small, brightly-decorated space these past eighteen months. And to her, the subtle shift away from dust motes, flowers, and decorative frilly crepe paper to leather and musk is unmistakable.

Second--and far more importantly--the pulsepoint of her right wrist starts to tingle and throb in a very specific sort of way she wouldn’t be able to miss even if she tried.

Rey sucks in a stunned, shuddering breath. The faint hints of musk, of masculinity, in the air grow stronger, fill her lungs...

_ This… this cannot be happening. _

After twenty-nine years without a soulmate, Rey had all but given up hope of ever finding one. Most of the time she doesn’t even think about how she’s still unmatched--most of the time she doesn’t even think she  _ wants _ to be matched--despite the fact that matched pairs and romance are literally her industry and would still be part of her everyday life even if they weren’t. 

She is definitely thinking about being matched right now, though. There is just no way to ignore how the skin of her right wrist nearly  _ vibrates _ with sensation beneath the brightly-colored plastic bracelets she put on before leaving her apartment this morning. 

It’s exactly the way they said it would feel back when they went over this years ago in Grade Nine health class, all pinpricks and tingles that aren’t quite painful but aren’t exactly pleasure, either. She feels an indescribable sense of longing, of  _ belonging _ , that she has never felt at any other point in her life before, and she rubs reflexively at her wrist with her free hand, massaging it the way one might try to wake up a foot that’s fallen asleep unexpectedly.

She looks up at the people in her shop for the first time since coming into the waiting room, her heart thundering against her ribs so hard it feels about to burst from her chest. Because according to everything Rey has ever read or heard, when your soulmark wakes up, that means you are standing just a few feet away from your soulmate for the first time in your life. 

Which means her soulmate--the person she’s done everything she can to stop thinking about, to pretend isn’t out there, somewhere--has to be one of the two people in this room.

Her eyes flit back and forth between the tall, angular woman standing before her and the man, who is staring back at Rey with a look of wide-eyed shock on his face. He’s rubbing at his left wrist, the exact same way Rey is rubbing at the back of her right, and--

And, all of this can mean only one thing.

The enormity of the realization steals the breath from her lungs and nearly causes her to double over.

“I’m so sorry, Ms. Johnson,” the woman is saying. Rey’s eyes flick to hers. If this woman realizes what has just happened--what is  _ still _ happening, if the slack-jawed, round-eyed stare this man is giving her is any indication--she shows no sign of it. Rey can’t decide if that makes this better or worse. “Ben and I don’t have an appointment, and I know it’s rude to just show up after business hours like this unannounced. But you didn’t answer your phone, I’ve heard you’re the best in the business, and we are on an  _ extremely _ tight schedule for our wedding.”

The man standing beside her--he’s tall, Rey realizes; almost imposingly so, with shoulders so broad beneath his charcoal grey suit jacket she wonders whether he played football in school--makes a kind of throat-clearing kind of noise in the back of his throat that sounds like he’s being strangled. His lips--the plumpest, fullest lips Rey has ever seen on another person before--are pressed together into a tight, thin line.

She stares at that mouth of his for so long that if the woman were looking at Rey, rather than rummaging around for something in her purse, she has no doubt she would know in an instant what was going on.

“It’s… it’s fine,” Rey says, distracted, to the woman. She tries, with difficulty, to tear her eyes away from the man’s angular, distinctive face. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, clearly anxious and uncomfortable. The smell of musk fills the air as he moves, and suddenly it is all Rey can sense, is the only thing she ever wants to smell for the rest of her life. The woman is writing something down on a piece of paper now, oblivious to the fact that Rey is close to passing out and the man standing beside her--Ben, apparently;  _ Ben, Ben, Ben-- _ looks seconds away from bursting out of his own skin. “I’m just closing up for today, but--”

“We can go,” the man says, cutting her off. His voice isn’t just deep, Rey realizes, now that she’s this close to him. It’s practically  _ subterranean _ . The sound of it sends frightful, delicious shivers down her spine. “We can… come back tomorrow, Baz. Or make an appointment for next week. Or…”

He trails off. Or maybe he doesn’t--maybe he’s still talking; maybe Rey is just no longer able to process words--because now she can feel the disparate tingles at her wrist coalescing into the distinct soulmark that will bind her to her soulmate forever, rising up from beneath the surface of her skin, and suddenly the sensation of it it is the only thing that matters.

_ What will it be? _ she wonders, feverishly, before she can stop herself and remember that thinking about her new soulmark is a terrible idea.  _ Will it be a symbol? A word? A phrase? Or-- _

“We don’t have time for an appointment next week, Ben,” the woman snaps. She sounds impatient. It’s a tone Rey has come to know well in this business. “Our wedding is--”

“I know. I know.” Ben’s eyes are squeezed tightly shut, the same way Rey squeezes her eyes tightly shut whenever she’s trying to ward off a particularly nasty migraine. “But I really think we… need to leave.”

“Ben, I don’t see why--”

“ _ Bazine _ .” Ben’s tone is guttural. Desperate. “We need to leave right now.” He’s still rubbing at his left wrist. The sleeve of his shirt is starting to creep up his forearm--just a little; just enough to grant Rey a little glimpse of the soulmark that’s starting to work its way to the surface of  _ his  _ skin. But not enough for her to make out what it is. 

Rey has never wanted anything in her life more than she wants to see his mark. To press her lips to it. It’s a panting, desperate, wretched feeling. She would hate it, if it didn’t feel so good.

“Ben--”

But before Bazine can finish her sentence, Ben turns abruptly on his heels and all but runs from Rey’s shop, slamming the door shut behind him. 

* * *

It isn’t until Rey is finally alone in her little apartment, with a Coors Light in one hand and her Nintendo Switch controller in the other, that she finally works up the courage to push up her right sleeve to see what her brand new soulmark is.

Her breath catches in her throat at the sight of it.

Rey has tried not to think about the situation she’s found herself in since Baz ran after Ben earlier this evening. Ben is… probably her soulmate, yes. But he is still a stranger. More than that--he’s a stranger  _ engaged to someone else _ , who did not leave her any way to contact him before he fled the scene.

She doesn’t even know his last name.

There is no possible way this will end well.

But now, as Rey gazes at the small, perfect likeness of Ben’s beautiful, full lips etched indelibly and permanently into her skin, she finds herself tracing first the top lip, and then the bottom, with the tip of her index finger, utterly entranced.

Here, in the safe space of her own home, she lets her mind wander. 

What does Ben do for a living? He’d been wearing a suit and tie in her office, with perfect hair and immaculately shined shoes. Is he an attorney? A CEO of some kind? 

Her mind drifts further--and it isn’t long before she finds herself wondering if those impossible lips of his would feel as soft, kissing her, as they look.

She shoves the thought away as quickly as it materializes. Because his lips… they don’t matter. None of this matters. She doesn’t know Ben, and he is going to marry Baz. Soulmate or not, she is almost certainly never going to see him again.

It would, of course, be just her luck that when she finally found her soulmate, it would be someone she can never have. The world is full of tragic poems and cheesy ballads on this general theme--soulmates who are married to other people when they find one another, or who otherwise meet after it’s already too late. 

Rey just can’t believe that those awful songs and poems are describing  _ her _ life now.

It just isn’t fair.

Tomorrow, she’ll call Finn and tell him all about it. She’ll cry on his couch, and he’ll be sweet and good to her, offering her a comforting evening of junk food and bad movies. But as good a friend as Finn is he can’t  _ really _ understand. He and Poe matched their freshman year of college and they’ve been inseparable ever since. Finn understands loneliness, to some extent. He grew up without a family too. But he doesn’t know what it’s like to wait for your match for years--or the empty, punched-in-the-gut feeling that comes with finding your soulmate after they’ve already fallen in love with someone else. 

So calling Finn can wait for tomorrow. Just for tonight, Rey will let herself touch Ben’s lips the only way she will ever be able to.

With her fingertips.

Her lips.

And her tears.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey begins to type. "My soulmate’s name is Ben. He came into my shop yesterday with his fiancee. My mark appeared a couple seconds after I saw him. Based on how he reacted I’m guessing his did too. But before I could confirm this he ran away. "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My goal (for now anyway) is to update every Sunday evening. I have several chapters written after this one so the odds are excellent that I'll be sticking to that plan. We'll see how I do. ;)
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who left comments and kudos on the last chapter! I hope you enjoy the rest of the story as it progresses. :D

The alarm on Rey’s bedside table goes off far too early the next morning. 

Ordinarily, Rey has no trouble waking up right when it goes off at six o’clock. But she’d stayed up far past her usual bedtime last night. She’d stared, enraptured, at her new soulmark for what must have been hours, tracing the outline of Ben’s beautiful lips over and over again with her fingertips.

_ Ben _ .  _ Ben. _

Rey slaps her hand down on top of her blaring alarm clock, shutting it off. She pulls her pillow over her face and groans, not quite ready yet to face the day.

She has a nine o’clock appointment to help a couple pick a photographer. She contemplates rescheduling--something she _never_ does; she’s in a competitive business, and rescheduling a meeting with a client at the height of wedding season can mean losing that client to a competitor--but then decides rescheduling probably isn’t a good idea. Staying home and ruminating on her ridiculous situation won’t change anything. 

She knows, from long years of experience, that wallowing in self-pity never helps.

She throws her pillow to the floor and fumbles around on her nightstand for her phone. Finn almost certainly won’t be awake yet, but she might as well get this over with anyway.

She holds out her wrist, and snaps a picture of her new soulmark with her phone. 

_ It finally happened, _ she texts him. 

He’ll know what the  _ it _ is referring to right away of course, and she briefly considers leaving it at that. The rest of it is too hard and awkward--and painful--to explain. But if she leaves it at that Finn will just get all excited for her. Which in the long run will only make things harder and even more painful.

She closes her eyes and sighs. Better to get it over with all at once and just rip it off like a bandaid.

_ My soulmate’s name is Ben. He came into my shop yesterday with his fiancee. _

_ My mark appeared a couple seconds after I saw him. Based on how he reacted I’m guessing his did too. _

_ But before I could confirm this he ran away. Like LITERALLY ran away. _

She pauses, and adds:  _ I don’t even know his last name. Or anything about him at all really other than what he looks like obviously and what I just told you. _

She doesn’t think Finn will reply right away. His new job in the financial district doesn’t expect him to come in until around ten in the morning, and ever since starting it he basically never gets out of bed before eight if he can help it. But by the time Rey has finished her first cup of coffee and taken a shower Finn’s already written her back.

Apparently juicy news from your best friend is a good incentive for getting up in the morning.

**Oh my god.**

**Are you serious?**

Rey sighs.

_ Serious as a heart attack. _

**Fuck, Rey.**

_ I know. _

**What did he do?**

**After the soulmarks appeared, I mean.**

_ I already told you that. _

_ He ran away. _

**What do you mean by ‘he ran away”?**

_ Literally just that. _

_ We matched. He turned on his heels and basically sprinted out of my office without another word to either me or his fiancee. _

_ Who happens to be tall and gorgeous btw _

**Oh my god.**

**Rey, this is terrible.**

_ Thanks. I already knew that. _

**I’m sorry, babe.**

**I really am. I’m just**

**having trouble processing this.**

**Running away was about the furthest thing from my mind when Poe and I matched, is all.**

_ When you and Poe matched you weren’t visiting a wedding planner because you were engaged to be married to someone else. _

**That’s…**

**A valid point.**

**Anyway--what are you going to DO?**

_ I’m going to go to work. _

_ I have an appointment at 9. _

**No, no. I mean--what are you going to do about Ben?**

Rey pauses, and bites her lip.

What  _ is _ she going to do about Ben?

_ Nothing. _

_ I don’t think there’s anything I can do, is there? _

A long pause. And then:

**I love you. You know that, right?**

Finn’s non-answer is all the confirmation Rey needs that she’s right. There  _ isn’t _ anything she can do.

In the end, that’s what causes Rey to finally break down and start crying. 

* * *

By the time she finally makes it to her office by a quarter to nine, Rey’s nerves are jangling nearly as loudly as the bells hanging above her front door. 

Rey’s usual protocol is to get to work at least thirty minutes before her first meeting. That way, she can go over her schedule for the day and her notes, and be fully prepared for whatever her first clients might throw at her. Her clients are often stressed and disorganized; they pay her to be cool, calm, and collected for them. But today, Rey is so completely unnerved she’s just glad she made it to her shop with enough time before her nine o’clock to Keurig herself another cup of coffee.

It was at least two in the morning before she fell asleep last night. She’s going to need all the caffeine she can get her hands on just to make it through the day. 

As she sips her coffee she leans across her desk and listens to the voicemails waiting for her. 

This morning, there are only two. 

The first is from a woman who introduces herself as Bazine Temple. At first Rey doesn’t register the name or the voice. She grabs a pen, ready to take down the woman’s information.

And then, all at once, Rey realizes who  _ Bazine Temple _ is. Her stomach plunges—then she looks at the time stamp on it and realizes Bazine left this message before she and Ben showed up and her world turned upside down, not after.

It’s a minimal comfort.

_ Hello, Ms. Johnson. My name is Bazine Temple. My fiance Ben Solo and I are getting married in three months. At first we were foolish enough to think his mother could help us with all the details. It is clear now, however, that we were wrong. As such we are now in dire need of professional wedding-planning assistance. Your work comes very highly recommended, and I was hoping we might drop by this evening for an impromptu meeting. _

The message continues for some time, but Rey stops listening about a minute in. Because the rest of the message doesn’t really matter, does it? She cannot imagine Bazine is still interested in retaining her wedding planning services. Rey doesn’t know anything about her--but she’d have to be in a coma not to figure out pretty quickly that her fiance just matched with the wedding planner. Even if Bazine  _ didn’t _ dump him the second she caught up with him last night and saw his soulmark she is definitely not going to want Rey anywhere near their plans. 

The next message, however, has Rey’s full attention the moment it begins. It was sent last night, at eleven forty-three.

_ Ms. Johnson? This is Ben Solo. I was… um. In your office earlier tonight, with my… with Bazine. Listen, I’ve never done this before… _

There’s a long pause, and then a soft, low chuckle. At some point Rey must have found her chair because she’s sitting in it now, though she has no memory of pulling it away from her desk or sitting down in it. Ben’s voice is so deep, pouring from the receiver like warm molten honey over her skin. She wants to drown in it. She thinks, if she tried hard enough, she probably could. 

_ Actually, I suppose it goes without saying that I’ve never done this before, doesn’t it? Anyway, I was hoping to talk with you. About… what happened yesterday. And other things. If you’re willing, please call me at your convenience.  _

Rey furiously scribbles down the number Ben gives her. Then she listens to the message a second time, because she already can’t get enough of his voice. And just because she can.

Rey glances up at the clock hanging on her wall. Her nine o’clock will be here in ten minutes, and she’s  _ never _ been this unprepared for a client meeting before. But her heart is beating in her chest a hundred miles an hour, and Ben wants to talk with her, and--

She’s already dialing his number with shaking hands before she can tell herself that this is a terrible idea.

He picks up immediately.

“Hello?”

His voice is calm. Smooth. Everything Rey isn’t in this moment. She opens her mouth to reply to him, but then it occurs to her--too late--that in her rush to call him back she never thought about what she might say to him if he answered. 

“Hello?” he says again, when Rey does not respond. “Is anyone there?” There is a hint of impatient irritation in his voice now, a suggestion that he feels his time is being wasted. Rey gets the impression that Ben Solo is not a man who willingly suffers wasted time.

Rey swallows, and gathers her courage.

“Ben?” She pauses. “This… this is Rey Johnson.”

Dead silence. A few moments later Rey can hear movement on the other end of the line--papers being shuffled, an over-large man rearranging himself in his chair. 

“Ms. Johnson,” he says, kindly. His voice has gone quiet, his impatience from a moment ago gone now. He chuckles a little. “I wasn’t sure whether you would call me.”

Rey nods, then realizes--feeling foolish--that he can’t see her do it. “I wasn’t sure whether you would call  _ me _ .”

“Oh.” He clears his throat. “Well... I felt I had an obligation to reach out to you after… well.”

Her stomach lurches. Of course, he’s calling her out of a sense of obligation. Nothing more. 

“You… didn’t have to call me,” she mumbles. 

“But I  _ did _ ,” he insists. “I needed to apologize. It was incredibly rude of my--of  _ Bazine _ and me to show up so late without an appointment. And it was the height of rudeness for me to run away without saying a single word mere seconds after meeting… after meeting my soulmate.”

Soulmate.  _ Soulmate _ . There it is, then. Rey has to bite her lip, has to close her eyes, has to set the receiver of her phone down on her desk for a moment, to keep from swooning at the sound of that single word spoken in his voice.

In her soulmate’s voice.

God, she is such a mess. 

“It’s… it’s fine,” she says, hoping her voice isn’t shaking too badly.  _ I’m just glad to hear from you again.  _ “Don’t worry about it.”

There’s another long, awkward pause, punctuated only by the ticking of the clock on Rey’s wall and the rapid staccato beat of her heart.

“I... don’t know what happens next, Ms. Johnson,” Ben admits quietly, sounding suddenly abashed and almost as overwhelmed as Rey feels. The idea that he might be as bewildered as she is by everything that has happened reassures her a little.

She takes a deep breath and wills her heart rate to slow. 

“Call me Rey,” she tells him. Because even though they are strangers, they’re soulmates. The idea of him calling her  _ Ms. Johnson _ is ridiculous.

Ben makes a nonverbal noise that Rey takes as agreement. “Rey it is, then.” Another pause. “As I was saying I… don’t know what happens next. The honest truth is I never thought I’d have a soulmate.” He clears his throat. “I’m thirty-five years old, and…”

He trails off, not finishing the thought. 

“I... never thought I’d find a soulmate, either,” Rey admits.

“To be blunt, Rey,” Ben continues, “I’ve never  _ wanted _ a soulmate. My life has been good, predictable. Stable. I never felt any desire to change any of it. I never saw the  _ need _ to change any of it.” He pauses. It sounds like he’s drumming his fingertips on some kind of hard surface. A desk, maybe. “But…. well. Now that I have your mark on my arm--that is to say, now that I  _ do _ , in fact have a soulmate--I think that changes things.”

Rey’s eyes go wide. Her thoughts turn uncomfortably to Bazine. Swallowing around the lump in her throat, Rey asks, “How… how do you mean, it changes things?” 

He doesn’t answer her right away. When he does, his tone is different, somehow. Less assertive; more tentative. It’s also not a real answer. “I think it would be good if we… talked.”

Rey blinks. “We are talking.”

“In person.” The sound of fingertips drumming on a wooden surface grows louder. “Over coffee, or something. Or a meal.”

Is he proposing a date? “I see.”

“Don’t worry, Rey. I’m not about to turn your life upside down over this… development,” he adds. “And I’m not interested in changing anything about my life, either. But…” He trails off again. His next words are spoken with careful precision. “But it would be odd, I think, if we didn’t see each other again. At least once.” Another pause. “Don’t you think it would be odd? We  _ are _ soulmates, after all. It makes sense for us to at least meet and have a proper conversation, get to know each other at least a little bit, even if nothing romantic will ever come of it.”

His last words are not a surprise. And yet Rey can feel them rattling around painfully inside her head all the same, making her feel like a bucket of icy cold water has just been dumped all over her.

She shivers. And then a knee-jerk self-defense mechanism, carefully honed since her lonely childhood, kicks in. 

“I don’t want my life turned upside down, either,” she hears herself say, as if from outside herself. “As for a romantic relationship…”

She pauses. Bites her lip.

“Rey?”

Rey grits her teeth. “A romantic relationship with you is… definitely not something I want right now, either. Just because our soulmarks popped up unexpectedly doesn’t mean we need to…”

“Right,” Ben interjects tersely. “So. We’re agreed, then.”

“Yeah,” Rey says, closing her eyes against the strange squeezing sensation in her chest. Ben doesn’t want to change anything about his current life--and until ten minutes ago Rey assumed she’d never hear from him again. Right now, she almost wishes she hadn’t. 

His confident tone from earlier is back when he continues. “I would like to see you again, Rey. I think it’s... important considering the circumstances.” 

Rey glances up at the clock on her office wall out of reflexive habit. It’s already eight fifty-five. Her clients will be here in five minutes. She has never been this unprepared for a client meeting in her life. But her soulmate--the soulmate she never thought she would meet--wants to see her again. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a terrible idea or not; in the face of Ben wanting to see her again, her usual knack for making the right decisions scatters like dust.

“When can you meet?” she hears herself ask him.

When he answers her, she swears she can almost hear a smile in his voice. “Are you free after six tomorrow evening?”

Rey glances down at her open planner. Her last appointment tomorrow is scheduled to end at four. 

She feels herself nodding in agreement. “I am.”

“Wonderful,” he says. And this time, she’s certain he’s smiling. 

* * *

There are five texts from Finn waiting for her by the time Rey’s lunchtime appointment is over and she finally has a few spare minutes to herself.

Ordinarily she responds to Finn’s texts right away. But texting him back is just going to have to wait until later—because now that she knows Ben’s last name, and she has another hour before her next meeting, all she wants to do is indulge her curiosity for once in her damn life and google him. 

Besides--Finn is just going to want an update on her situation. And she has a pretty good feeling that he isn’t going to approve of her having dinner with a man who’s engaged to someone else-- no matter that it’s with her soulmate, and the meal is going to be totally platonic. 

That matter settled, Rey types  _ Ben Solo _ into the search bar on her laptop with shaking hands. A bunch of links pop up right away, but the one that catches her eye is the one at the very top.

It’s a link to Ben Solo’s bio at Skywalker Industries--the company she worked at for three years before starting her own business.

Stunned, she clicks on it. His profile page looks incredibly professional.  _ He _ looks incredibly professional, in the small rectangular picture they’ve got of him in the upper right-hand corner of the page. He’s dressed in a charcoal grey suit and a dark tie, his expression so severe she wonders just how much the photographer who took the picture hated him by the end of the shoot. 

He’s a Vice President of Public Relations and Marketing, according to his bio—which, of course, means she would never have interacted with him during her time there, or probably ever even seen him. She drew plans and worked on designs; she never had anything to do with the marketing department. That would explain why even though they worked at the same company for three years, according to Ben’s bio, they never matched before right now. 

She shuts her eyes and presses a closed fist to the center of her forehead.

Saying yes to dinner with Ben tomorrow night might be the dumbest thing Rey has done. But at least now she knows they’ll have something to talk about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what could possibly go wrong?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is a day late! I’m currently out of town and somewhere with unexpectedly terrible WiFi. ❤️
> 
> Thank you so much for your kind words on the last chapter. :)

Rey stands in front of the full-length mirror that’s mounted on her bedroom door, frowning at her reflection. She’s spent the past ninety minutes trying to decide what to wear--which she knows, on some level anyway, is beyond ridiculous. Her situation with Ben is what it is. Nothing she wears, or doesn’t wear, tonight will change that. 

But here she is, like the newly-matched idiot she apparently is, fretting over her appearance all the same. 

Instinct, not rational thought, is clearly in the driver’s seat here. 

“This is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had.”

Rey pivots a little to face Finn, who’s perched on the edge of her bed with a look of such withering disapproval on his face it makes her flinch.

Her cheeks flush pink and hot with embarrassment. Because he’s right about this being a stupid idea, of course. 

“I thought quitting my job with Skywalker Industries to start up a wedding planning business was the stupidest idea I’d ever had.” She turns away from him so he doesn’t see how red her face is, and begins rooting around on the floor of her closet for her silver pumps.

“That  _ was _ the stupidest idea you’d ever had,” Finn agrees, his tone like acid. “Until now.”

She stands up and glares at him, embarrassment quickly morphing into something closer to anger. He might be right, but he doesn’t have to be a  _ jerk _ about it.

“Easy for you to say,” she spits. “You’re celebrating, what--your tenth anniversary with Poe next month? Or is it your eleventh?”

She turns her back on him again, irritation growing. She  _ knows _ those shoes are around here somewhere…

“Rey,” he says, after a pause, his tone more conciliatory. From behind her Rey can hear the creak of bedsprings that indicate he’s gotten up from the edge of her bed. A moment later his warm, reassuring hand is on her shoulder. “You  _ know _ I want you to be happy.”

It isn’t a question. Rey sighs, her shoulders slumping forward a little. “I know.”

“I just don’t think this is the way.” He puts his free hand on her other shoulder and turns her so she’s facing him. She still can’t bring herself to look him in the eye. “Rey. He’s engaged to someone else.”

“He’s my soulmate.” 

“I know, that, but…”

She gently shrugs his hands off her shoulders. Finn’s hands fall uselessly to his sides. 

“He’s my  _ soulmate _ ,” she says again. “He wants to meet me.”

“Rey--”

“He just wants to  _ meet _ me,” she repeats. “Nothing more. What am I supposed to say?” She lets out a huff of irritation. “ _ Sorry, Ben--I know we’re going to have each others’ soulmarks on our wrists for the rest of our lives, but you fell in love with someone else before that happened so I don’t think we should ever see each other again _ ?”

“I think that’s exactly what you should say.” Finn raises his hand as if to touch her again, then apparently thinks better of it, letting it drop back down again. “I’m reluctant to pull the  _ I’ve had a soulmate longer than you have _ card, but listen--I don’t think you understand how powerful a pull this is going to have over you yet. Over  _ both _ of you.” He looks her over, taking in her black sheath dress, her freshly painted nails and makeup, and her artfully coiffed hair. The last time Rey wore so much as mascara was sometime in the middle of the second Obama administration. “Or maybe you  _ do _ already get how powerful this is.”

Rey rolls her eyes. “It’s just a mark on my wrist, Finn,” she says, dismissively. But even as she says the words she can feel in her bones how false they are. She’s spent less than five minutes in Ben Solo’s presence; just the sound of his voice over the phone yesterday made her want to crawl through the receiver and curl up beside him.

“It’s far more than just that.” Finn shakes his head. “He may be in love with someone else, and he may even still marry her despite everything. But either way, given the…  _ unfortunate _ order all this happened in, I really worry that seeing him tonight has the potential to ruin both your lives.” He pauses, and takes a tentative step towards her. “I’m scared for you, Rey.”

As he speaks, out of the corner of her eye Rey catches the glint of something shiny peeking out from beneath her bed. 

“My shoes,” Rey says, happy both for the discovery and for the chance to change the subject. She maneuvers around Finn so she can get to her bed, then kneels down on the floor so she can fish the shoes out from under it. “There they are.”

“Rey,” Finn says, his voice pleading. “Babe. Please don’t do this.”

_ It’s too late _ , she thinks. 

“I’ll be fine,” Rey says--knowing, even as she says the words, that it might not actually be true. She slides her shoes onto her feet, pleased that they don’t pinch her toes quite as much as she remembers from the last time she wore them. “I promise.”

* * *

  
Ben hadn’t told her much about the place he wanted to meet tonight, other than suggesting she might want to get dressed up for it. 

And so she did, expecting that wherever it was they were meeting would likely be fancier than the usual kinds of places she goes. Even still, Rey was not prepared for…  _ this.  _ A server in a dark suit opens the velvet-curtained front door for her as she approaches and suddenly, the nerves that have roiled away in the pit of her stomach all day have ratcheted up even further. The sleek black sheath dress she bought for the last Skywalker Industries Christmas party she attended suddenly feels woefully cheap on her lean frame; her nice silver pumps, a tacky embarrassment.

The restaurant is crowded for this early on a Tuesday. Even still, it takes Rey no time at all to spot Ben, sitting at a small table for two tucked away in the back. She doesn’t know if it’s the fact that he’s her soulmate, or if it’s simply because Ben Solo is a large man and an objectively commanding physical presence; either way, the minute she sees him in her peripheral vision he is suddenly the  _ only _ thing she can see. 

He is scowling down at the menu in front of him when she spots him. A moment later, he looks up, sees her waiting for the host at the front of the restaurant--and his expression goes through a rapid transformation until it feels more like he’s looking right through her, looking  _ inside _ her, rather than directly at her.

The look in his eyes makes Rey shiver with a strange kind of anticipation she does not understand.

After a moment or an hour of this, the host finally appears and guides her to Ben’s table. His dark eyes follow her as she approaches him, taking in every step she takes and every subconscious little movement she makes as if trying to catalogue them for later.

And then, when she gets to his table, his expression changes. Softens. Relaxes.

“Hello,” he says, when she is finally sitting across from him. “You came.”

He smells incredible tonight--though Rey couldn’t describe the scent in words if she tried. Leather, and  _ male _ , and… Ben. And he looks even better than he smells, in a charcoal grey suit that looks like it was tailor-made specifically for him.

If half the stories she’s heard about what Skywalker Industries’ executives earn are true, she wouldn’t be surprised if it  _ was. _

“Of course I came,” Rey says. She plucks the cloth napkin off the table and spreads it across her lap, just for something to do with her hands. They won’t stop shaking. “I said I’d come, didn’t I?”

He nods, the right side of his mouth quirking up into a small smile. “You did.”

“This is a really nice restaurant,” she adds, looking around their small table and taking in their surroundings, trying not to sound appreciative but not  _ too _ awed. 

“It is,” he agrees.

“Do you... come here often?” It’s a cheesy thing to ask, she’s well aware of that--but it’s also sort of an important question. If this is someplace he comes  _ every _ Tuesday, for example, she’ll know how to categorize the importance of this evening in her mind. If he doesn’t, though…

“No,” he says. He clears his throat. He hasn’t stopped staring at her since he first spotted her in the restaurant, she suddenly realizes. Her knees go a little weak at the thought of how…  _ intensely  _ he’s been watching her. She grips the edge of the napkin on her lap a little tighter. 

“No?”

“No,” he confirms. “I’ve never been here before. But I’ve always wanted to try it.”

Rey swallows. What is she supposed to do with  _ that _ information? “Oh.”

“Rey,” he says. He says her name like he’s tasting it, savoring the single syllable on his tongue the way one might a delicious treat. She loves the way it sounds in his deep voice; she hates herself, more than a little, for it. 

And then, suddenly, his expression changes. His brow furrows, and he leans in closer to her from across the table. 

He opens and closes his mouth several times before finally saying, “I... feel like we’ve met before, Rey Johnson.” He cocks his head to the side again, considering her. “You look… familiar, somehow.”

Rey blinks at him in surprise. “Oh. I mean, yeah--I guess that makes sense.”

He frowns at her in confusion. “It does?”

“Oh.” Rey picks up her napkin and dabs at her mouth before setting it back down on the table beside her. Lipstick was a mistake. It feels sticky and foreign on her lips. “We… um. We used to work together. Sort of.”

His eyes go wide with surprise. “We did?”

“Yeah. At Skywalker Industries.”

“But… how is that possible?” His jaw works, and his brow furrows. “If we’d worked together, wouldn’t we have…” 

_ Wouldn’t we have matched? _

She shakes her head. “According to google, you work for a department I never dealt with directly.” She blushes, suddenly embarrassed at having admitted she looked him up online. She looks away from him, making a show of staring at the menu on the table in front of her. “We must have never interacted one-on-one while I was there. I’m guessing I look familiar to you because we attended the same company parties, or… occasionally saw each other from a distance. Or something.”

But even as Rey says the words, she realizes this probably isn’t the whole truth. Because the longer she sits here, the more she realizes Ben looks familiar to her, too, in a way that goes far beyond what she’d feel if they’d only ever seen each other at opposite sides of a room at a corporate retreat. It’s almost as if she’s seen his face before in a memorable dream, or in a movie she saw years ago but has mostly forgotten.

The recognition she feels, sitting here with him, is more than just passing familiarity.

Is this what it feels like, finding your soulmate? 

“So. Rey,” Ben says abruptly, cutting into her thoughts. He adjusts the napkin on his lap. “Have you been in the wedding planning business a long time?”

It’s such a random, cliche sort of thing to ask--the kind of question you’d ask a stranger you’re struggling to make small talk with at a boring party--and such a change in subject from what they’d just been discussing that it catches her off guard. 

She shakes her head. “No.” She looks down at the menu again, just for an excuse to look at something other than too-expressive face. “I left Skywalker Industries a little over a year ago. I started up my business about the same time.”

“Well. You have a fabulous reputation.” He’s making a point of looking at the menu now too, rather than at her; but his voice is warm and complimentary. It does something to her that she’d rather not think about, hearing him praise her in that deep, mellifluous voice. “In fact, you came  _ so _ highly recommended that I’d have thought you’d been doing it for years.” 

Rey chuckles a little, nervous, unsure exactly how to respond. “That’s… really great to hear. But no. I was an engineer before this. It’s what I went to school for, too.”

Ben looks up from his menu. “Really.”

She nods. “Yeah. That’s what I did at Skywalker.”

“But engineering’s an entirely different kind of work than what you do now.” He sounds genuinely surprised--like the idea of a person redefining themselves, fundamentally changing what they do every day, had never once occurred to him before now.

“It is very different,” Rey admits. “Though some of the skills I gained as an engineer translate pretty well.”

Ben peers at her with intense curiosity. Rey finds she has to look away again under the weight of his stare. “Such as?”

“I mean…” She racks her brain, trying to think of examples. “Organizational skills, mostly. Creating a schedule and sticking to it.” She bites her lip, thinking. Ben’s eyes are drawn, suddenly, to her mouth, the tips of his ears going pink, before they dart away again. Rey’s stomach swoops at the thought that the simple act of chewing on her bottom lip--a nervous habit she’s had since childhood--might be having some kind of effect on him.

It’s an exciting thought. But an uncomfortable one, too. He hasn’t once brought up Bazine.

“And... I mean, in both industries I’ve had customers,” she continues. “And I have to provide deliverables to my clients’ exact specifications. Sometimes the customer wants irrational things but it’s my job to manage those expectations and provide what they’re looking for as best I can. I did that all the time as an engineer. I do it now as a wedding planner.”

He looks at her again, his expression guarded.

“Do you enjoy what you do now, Rey?”

Rey’s eyes widen in surprise. “I’m sorry?”

“Well…” He trails off, and gestures meaningfully to her. “You left Skywalker Industries to go into an entirely different field. I was just wondering if you were happy with the change.”

She narrows her eyes at him. This is getting personal. A lot more personal than she thought they would get tonight. “Why does it matter?”

He shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “Just making conversation,” he says lightly. But Rey isn’t fooled. The set of his jaw is far too rigid for someone asking a simple, breezy question. His grip on his water glass is so tight his knuckles are turning white. 

She stares at it for far too long, his hand on the glass. Ben Solo easily has the biggest hands she has ever seen. She will not let herself imagine what it would be like, having those hands on her body. All the things he could do to her with those thick fingers.

“I do enjoy it,” she says, after a long moment. She tears her eyes away from his hands with difficulty. She crosses her legs, cringing inwardly when she realizes she’s already getting wet, just from this. “I enjoy it a lot, actually.”

“Good.” He nods. “I’m glad.” He gives her a smile, then--a sincere one that reaches his eyes, crinkling them at the corners. Rey finds herself leaning a little closer to him, across the table, without even realizing she’s doing it.

“Do you like what you do, Ben?” The question is out of her mouth before she realizes she’s said it. 

He looks at her, eyes suddenly gone hard and cold. “No.” 

“Not at all?”

He shakes his head. “I can honestly say there is not one single thing about my current situation that I am satisfied with.” 

For some reason Rey finds that sad. “Why can’t you just... quit?”

“It’s... complicated.” He lets out a dismissive snort. “Let’s talk about something else, shall we?”

But that feels profoundly unfair, given that she’s just told him a bunch of stuff about her but she still knows almost nothing about him. She shifts a little in her seat, and is about to open her mouth to tell him so, when the sleeve of her thin white cardigan slides up her arm a little, exposing the outer edge of her soulmark.

She hears Ben’s sudden sharp intake of breath…

And then all at once, everything around them seems to stop and fall away. The noisy din of the crowded restaurant, the people rushing around them--all of it, gone. All that remains is Ben, and her, the air in her lungs and the increasingly rapid staccato beat of her heart.

He swallows. The sound of it is amplified, magnified in the now-silent room.

“May I…” He pauses, and licks his lips. Rey has to bite back a quiet groan at the sight of his pink wet tongue involuntarily caressing the soft tender flesh. 

“May you… what?” she murmurs. Her voice sounds like it’s coming from very far away. Outside of herself entirely.

“May I… see your soulmark?” His voice is rough around the edges; the words sound torn from his throat. “Please. In spite of myself and all of my best efforts I have been unable to think about anything but what your soulmark might be for days.”

The wretched, almost desperate look he gives her breaks down any defenses she might have had when she sat down at his table a few minutes ago. With a shaking hand, Rey pushes the sleeve of her cardigan up to her elbow and extends her left arm across the table towards him, wrist side up. He stares down at her mark--at the perfect likeness of his full lips, peeking up at him.

Tentatively, as though fighting an intense internal war with himself, Ben reaches for her wrist with both hands. Before he can grasp it, though, he shakes himself a little, and folds his arms across his chest. He balls up his large hands into tight fists, the pinched look on his face suggesting he’s afraid of what he might do if he doesn’t restrain himself.

“I… want to touch it.” He swallows thickly, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. The words sound agonized; torn from his throat. “But I  _ shouldn’t _ . You and I…” He trails off, and shakes his head. When he speaks again, his next words are low and hushed, but spoken so rapidly they trip and tumble over each other in their haste to leave his mouth. “Rey, listen to me. I swear I did not invite you here under false pretenses. I told you on the phone that we would not become romantically entangled, and…”

”And you meant it.”

“Absolutely,” he says with conviction.

Rey nods, and braces herself to ask him the question she’s wanted to ask ever since they agreed to meet up tonight. “You and Bazine…” Ben flinches a little at the mention of her name, though it’s possible Rey’s only imagined that. “You’re... you’re still….”

“Yes.” Ben sniffs meaningfully and looks down at his menu again. His face falls a little--though, again, it could just be Rey’s imagination. “Bazine and I are... yes. Still.”

“Of course.” She’s being an idiot. Of course they’re  _ still _ . 

And she will  _ not _ cry. Not here, in front of Ben and all these people. Jesus Christ, she barely  _ knows _ this man. Why is she reacting this way?

“It’s… so strange, Rey,” he says, very quietly, still looking down at his menu and not at her. “Having a soulmate, after a lifetime without one. Feeling this strong connection to another person, a complete stranger, when two days ago there was… nothing.” 

Rey makes herself nod in agreement, swallowing around the lump forming in her throat. “Makes you sort of feel like you aren’t in control of your own destiny anymore, doesn’t it?”

Ben doesn’t say anything in response to that for a very long time. When he finally does, his words are so quiet Rey almost doesn’t hear them.

“I have never had any sort of control over my own destiny, Rey,” he breathes. “Never.”

But that makes no sense at all. He’s a vice president in a large, multinational corporation. His salary has to be well into the six figures. Certainly he must make his own hours, pick his own projects…

She takes one look at the torment on his face, though, and says nothing. Instead, she quietly pulls her hand back and slides the sleeve of her cardigan back down so her mark is hidden again. 

“Can I see your mark, now?” she asks, trying to cut through the stilted awkwardness that’s settled between them and change the subject. Her question is an innocuous one, she thinks. And valid. She just showed him hers; certainly she’s entitled to see his now? 

His reaction surprises her.

“No,” he says flatly. “Absolutely not.” His spine straightens, the corners of his mouth turn down into a hard frown. He turns bodily away from her, closing himself off, and pours himself a glass of water from the pitcher their server left on the table. He is careful, Rey notes, to make sure his shirtsleeve doesn’t ride up his forearm by even a scant inch in the process. 

Rey stares at him as he pours the water, completely dumbfounded. 

“Why not? I just showed you mine.”

Ben hesitates a moment. “I… I know.” He sets the water pitcher down on a long, forlorn sigh. “I know. It’s just that…”

“Don’t you think it’s only fair that I get to see yours?”

“Yes.” Ben closes his eyes. “I do think that would be the fair thing. But…”

He takes a deep breath, and lets it out very slowly on a quiet sigh.

When he doesn’t finish the thought, Rey prompts, “But what?”

He looks at her then. For a fleeting moment there is something hot and wanting in his gaze. And then, just as quickly as it appeared, it is gone again. Ben clears his throat, schooling his features into a mask of perfect calm and indifference.

“ _ But _ ,” he says, with heavy emphasis on the word. “It isn’t a good idea. Not here.” He shakes his head. 

“But--”

“No, Rey.” His tone of voice is almost harsh, and brooks no opposition. She shrinks a little in her seat, her heart pounding in her chest. “I… just, no. Not yet.”

Their server chooses this moment to appear at the side of their table. 

“May I take your orders?”

Ben turns to him, clearly relieved for the interruption. “Yes, thank you. I was beginning to wonder when you would show up.”

But Rey is not relieved for the interruption.

Not at all.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey sees his soulmark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to Sunday updates! Thanks for reading, everyone, and for all your lovely comments. I'm back from being out of town now and hope to be able to reply to them all over the next few days <3

Ben stumbles into his apartment, his heart and his stomach in knots--and his cock still half-hard inside his slacks, even though he left Rey Johnson at her bus stop more than forty-five minutes ago and has been away from her intoxicating, unique scent ever since.

He runs a shaky hand through his hair and kicks his front door closed. It slams shut with a little too much force--hard enough to rattle the living room windows and knock the framed picture of his family that hangs over the fireplace slightly askew.

He looks around the room, and his breath catches when he sees the smaller of Bazine’s two suitcases lying on their glass-topped coffee table. It sits there, unzipped and open, its contents on full display. 

A filmy white blouse, a pair of dress pants, and one of her favorite nightgowns lie neatly folded inside. 

The fight they’d had tonight just before he left for dinner with Rey starts playing through his mind again, like an old movie reel slowed down to half-speed.

Maybe Bazine just means to go up to Wisconsin for a few days to clear her head. If she were leaving him--like she said she was thinking of doing--she’d probably have gotten the big suitcase down. Not the smaller one she only uses for overnight business trips.

Right?

Not that he could really blame her if she  _ did _ leave him. What they’ve had has always worked for them, more or less--but mostly because they’re both workaholics without soulmates who don’t need much from other people. She gets along reasonably well with his unreasonable parents, which is no small feat. They have a nice enough dinner together at a Thai place around the corner from their apartment once a week or so, on nights when they’re both able to get home from the office at a reasonable hour.

They fuck with roughly the same infrequency.

Which is fine. It’s always been just  _ fine,  _ with Bazine. Ben hasn’t really thought about it until now but the past four years have been among the most predictable and stable years of his life. After the volatile nightmare that was his adolescence and most of his twenties, predictable and stable was more than he’d ever dared hope for. 

But now that another woman’s mark is branded on his skin...

God.

Ben runs his hands over his face and huffs out a ragged breath before flopping back down onto the loveseat.

All those terrible things Bazine said to him tonight had been entirely deserved, of course. Even if not one  _ bit  _ of this situation is his fault. He never asked for this. More to the point: he never  _ wanted _ this. 

But it doesn’t matter what he wanted before he met Rey. The moment he laid eyes on her it was as if some vital piece of himself he’d never known was missing manifested suddenly, right in front of him, out of thin air. The sudden understanding that until that moment he’d really only been half alive punched the breath from his lungs--and caused him to turn tail and run like the coward he’s always been.

As his soulmark emerged on the inside of his wrist Ben swore he could feel the trembling beat of Rey’s pulse, mirroring the quickening pace of his own. 

His cock has been at least half-hard, basically constantly, ever since.

_ Why couldn’t I have met you while you still worked at Skywalker? _ The question tormented him tonight all through dinner. It torments him now, as he sits slumped against the back of his couch, his cock hardening further in his pants the longer he sits there, thinking of her.

Surely it is the cruellest twist of fate that he didn’t meet his soulmate until years after he’d already met someone else.

His soulmate.

Rey.

God, she is beautiful. More than beautiful; she is  _ stunning.  _ Her dress tonight hugged her slender curves in all the places he has yearned to touch her since the moment he first saw her. And then, when she slid up her sleeve and he saw the image of his own lips staring up at him from the inside of her delicate wrist…

His cock twitches at the memory.  _ Hard _ . He buries his face in his hands and groans, loudly enough that if Bazine is still in the apartment somewhere she will certainly hear him--and round two of their fight will begin.

He holds his breath. He waits. He drops his hands away from his face and listens for her light, quick footsteps coming towards him down the hallway.

They don’t come.

He cranes his neck a little so he can see into the small galley kitchen off to the right of the living room.

She isn’t there.

She isn’t home. 

On instinct, Ben hurries to the guest bedroom before he can remind himself he is a  _ deplorable  _ human being, and quietly closes the door behind him.

His pants are around his ankles, his fist gripping tight around the base of his cock, before he’s even made it all the way to the bed.

It’s both better and worse when he lets himself see his soulmark while he does this. Better, because it usually gets it over with faster; a few quick strokes while looking at her mark on his arm is usually all it takes to bring him to a mind-blowing orgasm, his mind snapping blank as visions of her beautiful face fill his senses.

But it’s also worse this way--because looking at his soulmark while he jerks himself off makes him feel even more like a perverted asshole than he already does. He barely  _ knows _ this woman. Rey didn’t ask for this any more than he did. She  _ doesn’t  _ want a relationship with him and  _ he _ is engaged to another woman.

But Ben has always been a weak man. Two short hours in Rey’s presence was enough to wear down all the careful defenses he’s spent a lifetime building around himself. Right now all he can  _ think  _ about is coming, hard.

And as soon as possible.

Ben yanks up his right shirtsleeve and rips off the thin patch covering his soulmark so quickly it burns. But he ignores the discomfort, because now he can see it again. And that’s what matters. He lets out a pitiful grunt, gritting his teeth against the mind-melting pleasure already building at the base of his spine. He stares goggle-eyed at his mark--at the visible reminder that he is Rey’s and she is his, no matter what either one of them has to say about it--and he pumps mindlessly away at his cock, needing release right now more than anything he’s ever needed before. 

His hand speeds up and his eyes squeeze tightly shut against the pleasure as his mind is drawn helplessly back to how Rey looked tonight at dinner. She’d chewed on that delicious bottom lip of hers in indecision; if she didn’t already have him by that point she certainly would have, then. Ben wants to bite that lip himself, wants to taste it, wants to see her pretty little mouth fall open in surprise and pleasure as he makes her fall apart with his  _ actual _ lips--not just the poor imitation of them she will wear on her skin the rest of her life. 

In the end, it’s the thought of that--the thought of his lips circling and suckling at what he’s certain is the sweetest cunt he will have ever tasted--that pushes him over the edge. His orgasm crashes over him like a tidal wave--unrelenting, devastating--and he rushes headlong to meet it, his hot wet release spurting out of him and coating his fist.

As the endorphins in his bloodstream slowly ebb away and Ben’s breathing returns to normal, the self-loathing that has been his near-constant companion these past two days rushes in to fill the gap left by the receding pleasure.

_ What _ , he thinks miserably, as he rises from the bed and moves to the bathroom to rinse his sticky spend off his fist,  _ am I going to do? _

\------

Rey is startled out of a fitful sleep by her phone buzzing loudly on her nightstand. 

Confused and bleary-eyed, she fumbles around blindly a long moment before her fingers find and close around her phone. It’s still buzzing, still receiving new texts, when her eyes finally focus enough to see the screen.

Finn sometimes texts her in the middle of the night when he’s too wired from work to sleep and Poe isn’t awake for him to talk to. Rey also sometimes gets late-night texts from panicking brides who can’t wait until the morning to be talked off the ledge.

These texts aren’t from any of her clients, though. And they’re not from Finn.

They’re from Ben.

The messages have stopped coming, but he sent so many of them that Rey needs to scroll up a long way to parse meaning from them. 

When she gets to the picture he sent at the beginning of this middle-of-the-night text session she knows she won’t be able to fall back to sleep tonight if she tried. 

It’s a little blurry, which makes Rey think he must have been unusually distracted, or frazzled--maybe even drunk--when he took it. Everything about her limited interactions with Ben Solo so far suggests he is a man who doesn’t do anything with an unsteady hand. But then again, given the image on her screen she’d be surprised if he  _ wasn’t  _ a bit of a mess right now.

She realizes, with a sudden swooping sensation in her stomach, why he was so reluctant to share his soulmark with her in the restaurant.

Jesus Christ. 

Her collarbones look more pronounced-- _ sexier _ , somehow--on his wrist than they do on her actual body. And there is simply no way the slope of her shoulders could possibly be this gentle, this graceful, in reality. That said, there is no doubt that what she’s looking at right now is an image of the top of her bare chest--from her clavicle down to where the modest dip of her cleavage begins. 

And that it’s Ben’s soulmark.

Her breasts are mere suggestions--more hint and shadow than actual substance. Which is in keeping with everything Rey has ever heard about soulmarks. Soulmarks can be alluring, even suggestive, but it’s against whatever ancient rules govern these things for a soulmark to be overtly and explicitly sexual. Then again, if everything  _ else  _ Rey has heard about soulmarks is true, every time Ben looks at his mark he must be unable to think of anything but what her actual collarbones--her breasts--must look like in reality. 

She gapes at the photo he has shared with her for a long minute, her heart pounding in her ears, her blood thrumming hot in her veins. There is an unmistakable tingling sensation starting up again where her own soulmark stretches taut across her pulse. 

There’s tingling in other places, too. The sight of Ben’s mark is doing something to her that she doesn’t have words for. She wants to reach into her phone and trace the image of her collarbone with her fingertips. She wants to trace the outline of her body on his wrist with her tongue. Suck it into her mouth. Cover his mark with bruises from her lips. Mark him, even more unequivocally, as hers.

Eventually, Rey comes back to herself enough to scroll down and read the rest of the texts he sent her.

**[I’m sorry I didn’t share this with you in the restaurant earlier, Rey.]**

**[It was wrong of me, especially since I essentially demanded you show me your mark.]**

**[I’m just ]**

**[Really struggling with all of the changes that have happened in the past several days.]**

**[Anyway. This is my new soulmark. You showed me yours and it is your right, I suppose, to see mine.]**

**[Based on my limited observations at dinner tonight it seems as though the likeness is a good one.]**

**[Though of course I suppose it would be. Right?]**

**[That’s the whole point of the mark. I guess.]**

**[Anyway. I’m rambling.]**

**[Rey.]**

**[What I wanted to tell you at dinner tonight but was too afraid to say was that I am finding living with an image of a part of your body on my wrist, on my skin, on my person, almost unbearable.]**

**[Excruciating.]**

**[It plagues my every waking thought. I see it--you--in my dreams.]**

**[I honestly don’t know how much more of this I can take.]**

There are more texts, but Rey cannot no longer see them through the tears that are stinging her eyes and blurring her vision. She squeezes her eyes tightly shut against the pain and, without reading any further, deletes all of the texts he’s sent her tonight.

She cannot bear to read how much he hates being in this situation. How viscerally he despises having her as his soulmate. Choking back sobs, and feeling like her heart is being ripped from her chest, she writes him back.

_ {I think it would be better if we stayed away from each other.} _

_ {For my sake} _

_ {And for yours} _

And then, Rey shuts off her phone. After a m oment’s hesitation she launches it across the room with as much strength as she can muster. It hits the opposite wall and lands on her bedroom floor with a satisfying  _ thunk _ . 

She wonders if it’s broken now. Part of her hopes it is.

It’ll make forgetting the sight of her mark imprinted into Ben’s skin easier.

Maybe.

She lets out a noise of anguish, and then grabs her pillow, pressing it over her face. There’s no one here to hear her of course, but she wants to muffle the sound of her ugly, desperate tears all the same.

_ This is ridiculous _ , she tells herself as she cries. She is being ridiculous. A few days ago Ben Solo was a stranger to her. He still  _ is _ a stranger. She has lived her entire life without needing  _ anybody. _

Having his mark on her arm… it changes nothing.

And yet, on a cellular, primal level that goes far deeper than logic, she knows it changes absolutely everything.

She throws her pillow on the floor and, still sniffling away tears, turns her left hand over until her wrist is facing her. The image of Ben’s full lips glares back at her. Mocking her. She stares at it, the desire to press her own lips to it and taste the shape of the small smiles he gave her over dinner tonight no less prominent now than it had been before she woke up to his texts.

If anything, seeing his own soulmark tonight--her body, marked indelibly on his skin--has just intensified the yearning for him she feels but still doesn’t understand. 

The clock on her bedside table tells her it’s almost three in the morning. She sighs, and rolls over, knowing sleep will be elusive the rest of the night. 

* * *

When Rey gets to the Supreme Bean a little after ten the next morning Rose and Kaydel are already at a table near the back, waiting for her. Their heads are inclined towards one another in conversation; whatever Rose just said has made Kaydel grin from ear to ear.

“I hope us meeting here is all right,” Rey says, setting her canvas bag full of samples on the floor and taking the seat across from the two brides. She’s wearing her biggest, darkest sunglasses today, and keeps them on as she sips her coffee. Hopefully that will conceal how red and puffy her eyes are from crying. “The natural light in here is better than what I get in my shop in the mornings. And it’s much closer, I think, to what you’ll be working with at your venue.”

“Oh yeah, this is fine,” Rose says, waving a hand. She picks up her blueberry muffin and holds it up to Kaydel, wordlessly offering her a bite. Kaydel grins and leans forward, biting into it and humming happily. 

“Thanks, babe,” Kaydel says, her words muffled around a mouthful of muffin.

Rey ignores the painful squeeze around her heart at the reminder that this-- _ this _ \--is what having a soulmate is supposed to be about. Knowing glances and gentle touches. Inside jokes and shared pastries. But this is not the time for her to wallow in her own problems. No; she has a job to do, and these women are paying her very well to do it. 

She looks away from them, and shoves her bitter feelings and the memories of Ben’s painful texts to the side so she can focus on the tasks at hand.

She fishes around inside her bag for the planner she brought with her this morning, her hands still shaking a little more than they should be. 

_ At least I have something to think about other than Ben Solo _ , she thinks, ruefully. 

“Shall we go over the details for the centerpieces?” she says, trying--and utterly failing--to smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To those of you who were rooting for a labia-style soulmark for Ben at the end of the last chapter I have let you all down and I am sorry.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay with this update! There were several other projects that popped up rather unexpectedly (one was a cracky [twitter fic](https://twitter.com/jeenonamit/status/1292584430234669056) about a Virgin Vampire Ben Solo; the other was an original project, which I talk a little about on my [original fiction](https://twitter.com/jeenowrites/) twitter). We should be back on track for a once every week or two update schedule for the remainder of this story.

“Rey?”

Meredith, Rey’s new assistant, raps tentatively on her open office door. Rey looks up from the finicky lace invitation she’s been fighting with all afternoon and sets it down on top of the riotous, disorderly mess of her desk. 

She’s got a very tight deadline for this set of invitations but she swears they’ll be the death of her if she doesn’t take a break from them. Right now she’s more than a little grateful for Meredith’s interruption. 

“What is it?” she asks.

Meredith jerks her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the waiting room. “Someone’s here to see you.” 

“Really?” Rey frowns, and swivels around in her chair so she can rifle through the dog-earned, post-it-noted-filled pages of her daily planner. 

She doesn’t have anyone scheduled today until four.

“I don’t have any appointments right now,” Rey murmurs.

“She said she doesn’t have an appointment.”

Rey freezes, her eyes going wide as a chill runs down her spine. Her mind goes immediately back to the last time someone showed up in her shop without an appointment: Ben and Bazine, two weeks ago. The night her world turned upside down. 

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, counting to ten before turning around to face Meredith again because of course it isn’t Bazine. Right?

It _couldn’t_ be her. 

Rey made it perfectly clear she didn’t want to hear from Ben again when she texted him after their dinner and he hasn’t bothered her since. She cannot imagine either one of them would be brave or stupid enough to still want to use her wedding planning services.

Bazine certainly wouldn’t be, anyway.

Rey clears her throat and tries to will her racing heart to slow down. 

“Did she... give you her name?”

“She didn’t.” Meredith folds her arms across her chest and fixes Rey with her own very unique _I take no bullshit_ stare. Despite her rattled nerves Rey can’t help but smile a little. Meredith is only twenty-one years old and still in college, but even though she is only three weeks into her internship with Rey she has already proven to be such an invaluable asset.

She’s going to do just fine in whatever field she eventually finds herself in after graduation.

“Want me to tell her to set up an appointment and come back once she’s done it?” Meredith asks.

Rey puts down her planner. “No, no. It’s fine.” She stands up from her chair and stretches, raising her arms up high above her head. Her back makes a satisfying popping sound in the process. She really _has_ been hunched over that desk all day. “I need a break from these stupid invitations. I can go out and tell her myself.”

Rey doesn’t immediately recognize the older woman who is waiting for her in one of the mauve plastic chairs in her waiting room. Rey takes in her short stature, the graying hair piled up high in an elegant knot on the top of her head, and the classic navy blue pants suit that looks like it might cost more than Rey’s rent in a month.

And yet she looks vaguely familiar to Rey, somehow. She couldn’t say exactly how, but it’s like she’s seen her somewhere before, but can’t put her finger on exactly where or when.

“Can I help you?” Rey asks. 

The woman looks up from her phone. 

“I hope so,” the woman says brightly. She gingerly gets out of her chair and makes her way to where Rey is standing behind the counter. The woman shoots a somewhat distracted glance over her shoulder towards the door of the office. “I’m still waiting for my stupid husband to get here. Though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised he’s late.” She looks up at Rey and gives her a knowing, bemused glance. “He’s always late. For just about everything.”

Rey gives her a sympathetic nod. She knows just the type of man this woman is talking about. She sees them in this business all the time--men who are more or less happy about getting married but who have no interest at all in any of the details. 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Rey says. She opens her planner and grabs a pen. She rarely takes on new clients who just drop in like this, but she might as well _look_ like she does. “Is there anything I can help you with before he gets here?”

“Yes,” the woman says. She opens her cream-colored leather handbag and pulls out a small business card. She reaches across the counter to hand it to Rey--

But before Rey’s fingers even close around the small square of cardboard she knows with certainty who this woman is.

“You’re Leia Organa,” she breathes. Leia Organa--or, as Rey knew her in a previous life, Ms. Leia Organa, CEO of Skywalker Industries. The woman who--at nineteen years of age--helped her twin brother co-found what is now the largest and most successful company of its kind in North America.

“Yes.” Ms. Organa gives her a broad, genuine smile. “That’s me.”

Rey rocks back on her heels a little, thunderstruck. She opens and closes her mouth several times before she’s able to actually form words. 

“Well this is… quite a surprise,” she finally manages. “I used to work at Skywalker.”

The older woman’s perfectly manicured eyebrows shoot up. “Did you?”

Rey nods. “A few years back. I worked in engineering.” 

“I hope you didn’t leave because you were unhappy working for us.” Leia’s tone is serious. She gestures to the room they’re standing in. “This is quite the career switch.”

“Yes. I mean--no. No, I wasn’t unhappy at Skywalker.” She flips through her planner until she gets to a random page, grateful that she thought to grab it off her desk when she left her office. “I just… felt like I wanted to do something else after a while. Now--what can I do for you, Ms. Organa?” 

Because of course she’s going to do whatever Leia Organa asks her to do, appointment or no appointment. She is the closest thing Rey has ever had to having a celebrity in her office. Or Jeff Bezos. The last time Rey heard, the Organa-Skywalker family was worth over a billion dollars. 

She’s had some prominent clients before, but nothing like this. If Leia Organa hires her and she’s pleased with the work she does there’s no telling what this could mean for the future of her business.

“I need you to help me plan my wedding,” Ms. Organa says.

Rey frowns, confused. “But you just said you were waiting for your husband,” she says, as politely as she can. In fact, Leia Organa being married more or less tracks with Rey’s fuzzy recollections of the formal events she attended at Skywalker where Leia was also present. She vaguely remembers seeing her on the arm of an older, but still very handsome, man, wearing a suit that looked horribly uncomfortable for him and looking like he wanted to be anywhere but where he was. 

She’d assumed, back then, that that was her husband. Was she wrong about that?

Ms. Organa nods. “Yes, I am already married. Well...” She trails off, and laughs a little. “It’s complicated. My husband Han and I have split up and reconciled... several times,” Leia admits. “But we’re about to celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary. It’s made both of us grow the fuck up, finally, and--oh, god, please excuse my language. Sorry about that.” But Leia doesn’t look or sound sorry about her language at all. Rey has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. 

“Don’t worry about it,” she reassures her. “I’ve heard literally everything in this business.” Which is the absolute truth. “I don’t think there are _any_ curse words that are new to me at this point.”

“Well that’s good to know,” Leia says. “Because if you do agree to work with us you’ll hear plenty more where that came from.”

“I’ll make a note of it,” Rey says, grinning.

“Anyway,” Leia says, already moving on. “To put it more delicately, this anniversary milestone has helped us both appreciate what we have. We’re not getting any younger, and for better or worse… well.” She pauses, and pulls an old Polaroid from her purse. She places it on the counter in front of Rey. “We’ve decided to get over our dumb selves for once in our lives and renew our vows.”

Rey looks down at the picture Leia’s shown her. It’s of a much younger version of the woman standing before her right now, with her hair piled up in two complicated braids along each side of her head, wearing a simple white wedding gown. She’s beaming up at a younger version of the man Rey vaguely remembers from those Skywalker parties. He’s looking down at her like he’s amazed, awestruck, and terrified in equal measure.

“This is you,” Rey says, tapping the picture. Seeing how happy the two of them looked all those years ago pulls a smile from Rey before she realizes it’s happened.

“Yes,” Leia agrees, then sighs. “This is me. Or, it was me, anyway, a million lifetimes ago.” She picks up the picture and slides it back into her purse. “Our parents were already gone and we didn’t have money for a fancy wedding. So back then it was just me, Han, and my brother Luke who handled all the planning. We nearly killed each other then; I’m sure we wouldn’t last ten minutes if we attempted it now.”

“And so you want a wedding planner to help you do this?” Rey’s smile grows. “So no one gets murdered.”

Leia chuckles. “Or at least, to reduce the likelihood someone gets murdered. At this point I don’t think there are any guarantees when it comes to the three of us.” She shakes her head. “You come very highly recommended, I’ll have you know. I’m not sure why you left Skywalker, but I hope that whatever the reason was you won’t hold it against us and say no.”

Rey shakes her head. “I didn’t leave Skywalker because I was unhappy. I promise.” She looks down at her calendar. The next two months are already incredibly packed with appointments, fittings, and wedding ceremonies. She isn’t certain how she’s going to fit in Leia’s--but she knows she has to do it anyway. Leia Organa isn’t just one of the wealthiest people in this city, she’s also probably one of the most connected. 

There is literally no way she can turn down this job.

Fortunately, vow renewals are usually much easier than first time weddings. Older couples tend to go for sentimentality above just about anything else. Instead of crying to her about fabric colors or venues, if they have children or grandchildren they typically want Rey to help them find creative, meaningful ways to incorporate them into the ceremony and reception.

She always enjoys that part of this job a lot. The family part. Getting to know the people who know and love and support the people getting married.

She suspects this job will be more challenging than her typical vow renewal, of course. Leia Organa has always struck Rey as a force of nature. She may be small of stature, but during Rey’s time at Skywalker Industries she more than made up for that through force of will. When Leia wanted something done, it was done immediately and to her exact specifications. This held true no matter who she was dealing with. Subordinates, contractors, and even competitors trying to vie with Skywalker Industries in the bidding process were all nervous as hell whenever Leia Organa would enter the boardroom.

Rey pauses, feeling her nerves starting to get the better of her. But then she takes a deep breath, and reminds herself that if she weren’t _really_ good at what she does Leia wouldn’t be standing in her waiting room to begin with.

“My next few months are already getting quite booked up,” Rey admits. “So if you have a date in mind for the event you should let me know right away.”

“So you’ll work with us, then?” 

Rey nods. “I will.”

“Fantastic.” Leia pulls out a planner of her own from her purse and sets it down on the counter. She licks the pad of her thumb, and pages through it until she gets to a page labelled _August._ “Han and I were wanting to do it on our anniversary, which is in a month. But our son insists he won’t be able to get away from work long enough to attend the fucking thing unless we hold it sometime in the fall.” She rolls her eyes. “He’s a fucking workaholic. It’ll kill him young if he doesn’t watch himself.”

Rey nods, sympathetic. It’s not technically in her job description to serve as therapist for her clients; but listening to them vent about family and other problems is as much a part of her daily responsibilities as discussions about table linens.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says.

Leia sighs. “There’s nothing to be done for it, I guess. I’d always hoped he would match with someone that would calm him. Slow him down a little. But it doesn’t look like a match is in the cards for him.”

Rey flushes, trying hard not to think about how she, herself, just matched with someone after a lifetime of thinking it would never happen for her.

“You... don’t know that,” Rey says, subconsciously rubbing at Ben’s mark on her wrist. “It could still happen.”

“I don’t think so,” Leia says, sounding resigned. “And even if he did, it’s too late. He’s engaged, and to someone who works at least as hard as he does.” A moment later Leia shakes her head a little and says, “But we’re not here to talk about my son. We’re here to talk about picking a date for the vow renewal.”

“Right,” Rey says. She glances down at her planner. “Well, autumn does work better for me. Not that that should matter in your decision-making, of course. But if you need my help I’ll definitely be more available once wedding season is mostly behind me.”

“Well that’s something,” Leia says, brightening a little. She thumbs through her planner and stops when she lands on the page for _October_. “I spoke with Lando--he’s an old family friend, and the owner of the venue we’d like to use. He says we could have it on October nineteenth. Our son says that should work for him as well. So that’s when we’d like to have it.”

Rey goes through her mental checklist, counting backwards in her head from October nineteenth. “It’ll be tight,” she admits. “But if you’re flexible about certain details--”

“Oh we will be,” Leia assures her. “Han literally doesn’t care about one single goddamn detail. He just wants to be told when to show up and where.”

Rey smiles at her. “In that case I think we should be in good shape.”

Leia smiles at her. “So you’ll take us on, then?”

“I will,” Rey says. “If you just leave me an email address where I can reach you I’ll email you the contract later this afternoon.”

Leia grins at her and extends her hand for Rey to shake. “Wonderful.”

Rey clasps the older woman’s hand in hers, and grins.

* * *

Rey stops on the way home from work to grab a bite to eat with Finn. It takes longer than usual for them to get service, and longer still before the restaurant’s busy kitchen staff is able to get them their meal. And so it’s after eight by Rey time she makes it to her subway stop and nearly nine before she finally gets back home.

Normally, Rey likes to unwind from long, busy days by watching garbage television. Tonight, though, she’s too exhausted even for _Love Island._ Instead of plopping down on her living room couch and grabbing the remote like she normally does Rey tosses her keys onto her kitchen table and heads straight for her bedroom.

Her curtains are drawn and so it’s pitch dark in here. She doesn’t bother switching on her bedside lamp. She peels off her blouse and skirt and chucks them into a corner of her bedroom without even bothering to aim for her laundry basket. 

She peels back the covers to her bed and, with a tired sigh, climbs in. 

With how busy her day was today--and with the unexpected surprise of landing Leia freaking Organa as a client--she was almost able to ignore how the way her new soulmark tingles and aches nearly constantly. 

But now her day is over. She’s alone in her apartment, in her bed, with nothing left to distract her from things she really shouldn’t be thinking about. She takes a deep breath in, and then sighs it out, trying to fight off the raw, scraped-thin feeling that has been her near constant companion these past few weeks as it comes rushing back in. The flimsy barriers she’s tried to put up to protect herself from thinking too much about the mark on her arm--and about how desperately she wants Ben to touch it with his fingertips, with his lips--never hold up in moments when she is alone with nothing to occupy her mind. They fall away now, leaving her just as hurt and broken as she’d been the night Ben told her that being her soulmate was agony.

Ben isn’t going to touch her. Not on her mark; not anywhere. The exquisite, horrible, indescribable pull this complete stranger has on her just isn’t _fair_. 

She would climb up onto her rooftop to scream about the injustice of it all right this very second if she thought it would do any good.

Slowly--as if moving in a trance, or a dream--Rey lifts her wrist to her mouth and presses her lips to her mark. Warm, wet lips on cool flesh. They’re the wrong lips, they aren’t _his_ lips, and obviously this is but a pale imitation of what she actually wants. Doing _this_ will accomplish nothing but prolong the torment, force her to dwell on what she can never have instead of helping her move on with her life and move past the pain.

But Rey seems to be incapable of making good decisions these days.

She closes her eyes, and kisses the mark on her wrist again, and then again, imagining that it’s another set of lips kissing her there instead--and hating herself for it more and more every second. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone still remembers this story, hello! It's been a while. 
> 
> It wasn't my intention to take a... uh, nearly six-month hiatus from this story when I last updated it back in September. But a relocation plus a new job plus, well... ~waves vaguely at everything~ made focusing on anything that wasn't work or kdramas nearly impossible for me for a while.
> 
> I hope this chapter is even partially worth the wait for it. <3

Ben turns into the parking garage of Uncle Lando’s hotel, both glad--and profoundly irritated--that he managed to make it to his mother’s one o’clock appointment on time. He pulls his Mercedes into one of the valet spots towards the back of the first level and kills the engine, waiting for one of the valets to come take his keys. 

He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s been fighting a headache all day so persistent that the half-dozen Advil he’d taken throughout the morning haven’t been able to touch it. He’s not a doctor, but if he had to guess he’d say the stress caused by Bazine not getting in touch with him for over a week, and his inability to sleep because he sees Rey--her eyes, the tip of her nose, her  _ everything-- _ every time he closes his eyes is to blame for it.

Whatever its cause, his pounding head made work this morning painful enough. It is going to make the next forty-five minutes excruciating.

When his mother told him she and his father wanted to renew their vows he had laughed out loud--something he rarely did anymore, especially in front of his parents. But he couldn’t help it. It was just so  _ funny _ to think of his parents--some of the worst-married people he has ever personally known--getting romantic about everything just because they’d gotten older.

The two most important lessons he has learned from his parents are that finding a soulmate is absolutely  _ not  _ a guarantee of happiness--and that whoever invented divorce was a fucking visionary.

Ben pulls out his phone, and is about to call Uncle Lando to let him know he’s here, when a man wearing a navy blue uniform with  _ Calrissian Suites _ emblazoned on the front right lapel raps on the window of Ben’s car.

“Keys?”

Ben nods at him, wincing against the pain in his temples, and rolls down his window. “Here,” he says, handing them over.

“You staying overnight?”

Ben shakes his head. “I’m just here for an hour.” God, he hopes it won’t even take that long. He hopes his mother will be satisfied with his making an appearance here, at the venue where they’re going to hold this farce of a vow renewal in a couple months’ time. In truth, he hopes he can duck out after fifteen minutes.

He tells the valet none of this.

“Sounds good,” the valet says. He opens Ben’s driver’s side door for him and Ben steps out of the car, glad at least for an excuse to stretch his legs after the forty-five minutes it took to drive here from his office. He hands Ben a ticket, and jerks his thumb towards the valet stand. “Hand this to the guy on shift when you’re ready to pick it up again.”

“Yes. Thank you.” 

Ben stuffs the valet ticket in the pocket of his dress slacks and sighs.

One day he will learn how to say no to his parents without blowing up at everyone and everything within a ten-mile radius.

But not today. Today, he will have to grimace through this headache, nod as pleasantly as he can at his mother--and simply get through it.

* * *

Every once in a while Rey regrets going into wedding planning. 

When this regret hits her--which isn’t often, fortunately--it’s usually when she’s planning a vow renewal. It took months for her to realize why this was the case, but now she thinks she understands the crux of the issue.

Vow renewals, of course, are usually for older couples who have been together for decades--and for the families and dear friends who love them. At the center of almost every vow renewal are decades of shared intimacy and the strong, unbreakable family bonds that are built lovingly together over a lifetime.

Family--that unique, undeniable sense of belonging--is what Rey has always wanted more than anything. And what she’s never had.

And so sometimes, vow renewals can be difficult for her.

She can tell immediately, though, that this particular renewal won’t be difficult for her at all. 

For starters, Leia Organa and her husband have only been in this hotel ballroom for fifteen minutes and have been bickering with one another the entire time. Rey doesn’t have any room left for self-pity because she’s too busy wondering how the hell she’s going to manage pulling this event together if her clients can’t stop fighting long enough to answer her simple questions. 

She’s had clients like this before, of course. She’s worked with people who were getting married for the wrong reasons, or who are marrying for reasons Rey couldn’t begin to fathom. But she has never been asked to plan a vow  _ renewal _ for people who argued like this.

Why are these people even  _ here _ ? Shouldn’t they be meeting with a marriage counsellor--or a divorce attorney--instead?

“You wore  _ that _ ?” Leia is now saying to her husband in a loud, irritated voice, jabbing a finger at his chest. She’s holding a glass of red wine by the stem; for one mad instant Rey is terrified she’s actually going to throw its contents on Han’s offending shirt.

“What’s wrong with  _ this _ ?” Han demands. He looks down at himself--at his bright yellow Hawaiian shirt covered with bikini-clad hula dancers, and at his dark bluejeans with grease stains at the knees. 

Leia scoffs. “You’re really unbelievable. You know that?”

Han throws his hands in the air. “This isn’t the actual ceremony, Leia. You said we were just looking at the place. You know, to see where everything is.”

“You are at the  _ Calrissian Regency,  _ Han.”

“Lando’s place. Yes. I know. So what?”

“ _ So _ ,” Leia says, clearly exasperated now. “The conference rooms upstairs are full of people having business meetings. I probably  _ know _ half of them.”

“If you know them, they won’t be surprised to see your no-good husband showed up here looking like this.” He gestures theatrically to his outfit, then flashes Leia a crooked, self-deprecating sort of half smile, and… 

And, suddenly, the entire atmosphere in the room changes, cools down. The shift is nearly imperceptible but unmistakable. Rey glances at Leia, and can’t help but notice how flustered and flushed she now appears. Rey suspects Han must have been ridiculously, possibly even dangerously handsome when he was a younger man, and she wonders if Leia is thinking about that right now, too, as Han continues to smile sheepishly at her--about what he was like when they were both younger. 

By the way Leia’s cheeks are growing more flushed by the second, and by the way the hand holding her wine glass now shakes a little, Rey suspects she’s right.

Just thirty seconds ago they’d been fighting like cats and dogs. Now look at them.

It’s baffling to her, honestly. 

How many people has Rey known--both in this career and before it--that married their partner because of looks and raw attraction, or because of soulmarks and biological compulsion? How many of those same people ended up miserable, feeling trapped, with that person once reality and incompatibility in other ways set in?

Rey hopes Han and Leia don’t fall into that latter category. For their own sakes. Either way, the intensity with which they are looking at each other now suggests they’ve forgotten Rey is here altogether.

That happens at these walkthroughs sometimes, too. 

Well. Her clients not fighting with each other anymore is progress, she supposes. But she has a million things to do after this appointment, and a checklist of items to go over with both of them before she can leave. If Han and Leia can’t focus on why they’re here, she’ll have to make them focus.

Fortunately, getting distracted people to pay attention to her is something she’s gotten very good at. She stares pointedly at both of them and clears her throat very loudly. It works. Han and Leia stop talking at once and turn, in unison, to look at her.

“This venue should work well for what you have in mind,” Rey says, in the slightly authoritative tone she uses whenever she needs to regain control over a situation. Better to pretend she hadn’t noticed they were fighting, she decides. Best simply to get on with this meeting. 

Leia must recognize Rey’s tone for what it is. She clears her throat, straightens immediately, and says, “That’s good. I’d hoped you’d think so.”

Rey nods, glad to finally be getting somewhere. “Yes. I’ve helped plan several other receptions here. My clients always reported feeling very satisfied.”

Han snorts at that. “Lando isn’t a cheapskate about the alcohol. I’m guessing that’s part of why they’re satisfied.”

Leia shoots him a warning look, which Han counters--and diffuses--with a sly wink. Leia simply shakes her head and takes another sip of her wine.

Rey decides to ignore all of this and press on. “My notes here show you’re planning on one hundred and fifty guests.” She looks between Han and Leia. “Is that still right?”

“Yes,” Leia says. “Roughly that number, anyway. When will we need a final count?”

“I’m... not certain,” Rey says. She flips through the pages on her clipboard, searching for the caterer’s contact information. “The contract from the caterer doesn’t include that information.” She glances up at Leia and smiles reassuringly. “I’ll reach out to them after we’re done here and find out when they’ll need your numbers.” 

“Great,” Leia says. She looks at Han. “Is Lando here today? I know Rey’s been here before, but it would be good if he could take us all on a tour so we can see the facilities.”

Han opens his mouth to answer his wife--and maybe he  _ does _ answer her or maybe he doesn’t, but Rey has no way of knowing. Because all at once her ears are ringing so loudly it nearly blocks out all other sound, and the room is spinning like she’s inside a top--and suddenly, paying attention to anything at all besides the thundering beat of her heart is impossible.

She stumbles a little, hand reaching out blindly for something to hold onto for support. Her fingers close around something--the back of a chair, maybe--and she drops down into it, dimly aware that the soulmark on her wrist has now begun to tingle and throb. 

And then her eyes fly open very wide as she becomes suddenly, acutely aware of what that means.

She gasps around the lump in her throat, her lungs suddenly unable to pull in enough air. 

Her soulmate--Ben Solo-- is here. Right here. In this building. 

No.

_ No. _

This cannot be happening.

Not here. Not now. 

She has to get out of here.

“Will you… will you excuse me?” she asks Leia, wincing when she realizes her voice is shaking. Although it really doesn’t matter if Leia notices because _Ben Solo_ is here somewhere-- and if she doesn’t get out of here, now, it’s all over. 

Fortunately, Leia’s attention is back on Han’s shirt again, not her. The older woman waves towards Rey absent-mindedly. “Certainly, dear,” she says. Then she says something else to her husband but Rey is already out of the room by then and isn’t around to hear it. 

When Rey finally reaches the lobby she takes deep, gasping breaths through her mouth, her chest heaving like she’s just run a mile. 

She can still sense him out here, can still feel his heartbeat at her pulse points--but it’s fainter, somehow. The cloud of confusion that descended over her without warning in the ballroom has dissipated, making it possible for her to think again. She closes her eyes and buries her face in her hands, trying to ground herself by focusing on the cloying flowery scent of the soap she’d used earlier to wash her hands in the hotel restroom.

“I can’t do this.”

A deep voice Rey would recognize even if she were in a coma, or dead, rings out from the ballroom she just left. Ben’s voice. It reaches inside her, cuts her in a visceral sort of way she wouldn’t have dreamed possible before her soulmark appeared. He sounds agitated, almost angry, and Rey is so distracted by this fact it takes her entire minutes to wonder just what the hell Ben is even doing here in the first place.

“I know you don’t care for us, Benjamin. Or for the fact that we’re doing this.” Leia’s voice this time, clear and strong, cutting through the fog and the confusion in Rey’s head like a lighthouse at dawn. Rey closes her eyes and reaches out for that voice, wills it to ground her. 

“That’s not it.” 

“Isn’t it?” A male voice this time, but not Ben’s. Han’s. “You’ve been pretty clear from the beginning what you thought of us doing this.”

“That’s...” Ben trails off, and he… he  _ groans _ . Why is he groaning? Is he in pain right now, too? “Look. That’s not what this is about. I just… can’t be here right now.” Then the sound of rapid footfalls, heading out of the ballroom,  _ coming straight for her _ . “I’ll... call you tonight.”

Rey’s mind is screaming at her to run, to  _ run _ , as fast as she can and as far away from here as possible.

Her instincts, though, are demanding something else entirely. Her spirit and her soul and her soulmark are pleading with her to fling herself into Ben’s--her soulmate’s--arms as soon as he steps through the door.

By the time she’s made up her mind to run, it’s too late. He’s found her. 

Rey wonders, fleetingly, if Ben always looks like a runway model. He certainly does right now, in his three-piece slate grey suit that looks like it cost more than her last month’s rent. The fabric of his starched white shirt stretches tight across his broad chest, letting anyone with the power of sight know exactly how well-built he is. 

Rey has to dig her fingernails into her palms to remember herself, to resist the urge to run her hands over that broad chest. To see for herself if his shirt is as soft and silky as it looks.

For his part, Ben is openly staring at Rey, mouth partially open--like he’s not sure he isn’t dreaming right now.

“You.” The single word is accusatory. Ben’s eyes are wide as saucers, stunned, as they drink her in, sliding over her from the top of her head down to the tips of her high-heeled shoes. His gaze stays there, on her feet, with so much determination Rey wonders if he doesn’t trust himself to look anywhere else.

Rey swallows. Her throat is bone-dry, her tongue suddenly too big for her mouth. The room is suddenly far too warm, the sweater she put on this morning itchy against her skin and too thick. 

“What are you doing here?” Her voice is barely above a whisper.

At that, his eyes snap to hers. “What am  _ I _ doing here?”

“Yeah.”

A long pause. “They’re my parents, Rey.” Ben nods in the direction of the ballroom. “Han and Leia. They’ve wanted to do this stupid vow renewal for a few years now. Apparently their son’s presence is required for it.”

Rey doesn’t remember losing her balance, or sinking to the floor. But she must have done both of these things--because one moment she was listening to Ben tell her that he is the son of the most prominent clients she has ever had, and the next she is sitting on the hard tile floor, her legs tucked up to her chin and her face buried in her knees. 

_ No _ .

God,  _ no. _

“I’ll quit,” Rey mumbles, once she finds her voice again. The words sound far away, distant, and she hates that this is how things have to be. But it  _ is _ how things have to be. Her soulmate is engaged to someone else. Being around him--especially in the context of a wedding, of a  _ vow renewal _ \--will be a kind of torture she does not deserve.

“No.” Ben grunts, and lowers himself to the floor so that he is sitting right beside her. His large hand rests flat on the linoleum tile less than half an inch away from hers, so close she can almost feel what it would be like for him to cover her hand with his own. She shivers, and clenches her teeth against the wave of desire that washes over her. She burrows her face further into her knees. 

“I can’t let you do that,” he adds, when she doesn’t respond.

Her heart stutters in her chest. “I can’t… I can’t do this job, though.” She pauses. “Or… I mean, I can’t be around you. Like this.”

A pause. “Then I’ll bow out.”

At that, Rey looks up, stunned. “You can’t.”

He scoffs. “Why not?”

The question throws her. What does he mean,  _ why not. _

“I mean… they’re your parents--”

“We don’t get along,” Ben says. “We haven’t for a very long time. And to be honest, their marriage is one of the worst marriages I’ve ever seen.” He shakes his head, closes his eyes. “Them wanting me to be a part of this charade pissed me off a lot when they first told me about it. It still does. I’ve never wanted anything to do with this. That was true even before you--”

Ben stops abruptly, and looks at her briefly before looking away again, his cheeks going faintly pink. 

“Ben? Rey?” Leia’s voice cuts through the awkward, intolerable tension that’s fallen over them. “What are you doing out here?”

Rey looks up and sees Leia hovering, her head poking out of the door to the ballroom. Her gaze flits back and forth several times between her and Ben before finally landing on Ben and staying there. Her eyes narrow at him, accusatory. 

Has Ben told his mother what the two of them are to each other? No; he couldn’t have. If he had, she wouldn’t look as bewildered as she does now.

But Leia Organa didn’t become one of the wealthiest CEOs in the state by missing details. If nothing else she must notice how each of them look minutes away from bolting from the room. 

“I’m just about to go,” Ben says. He shifts from his position on the floor, the outside of his hand accidentally brushing up against Rey’s as he stands up. The contact lasts for just a fraction of a second, gone again before it’s even begun--and yet every nerve ending in Rey’s body is electrified, shivers running down her spine and her arms erupting in the kind of gooseflesh she’s only ever read about in Regency romance novels.

“You’re going?” Leia’s voice cuts through the haze filling Rey’s head. “But… but you only just got here.”

“You asked me to come see the place,” Ben says. Is his voice shaking? “I’ve come. I’ve seen. I have a meeting that begins in twenty minutes that I can’t be late for.” He glances down at Rey, then back to his mother. “You’re in good hands with Ms. Johnson.”

“But--”

“Go back inside, Mom.” Ben nods in the direction of the ballroom. “Ms. Johnson and I have a couple more things to discuss. She’ll be back inside in just a minute”

Leia stares at her son for another long moment, before sighing and nodding.

“Fine.” She shakes her head. “But you’re still going to be part of this, I hope.”

Ben opens his mouth to reply but before he can say anything his mother turns on her heels and walks back into the ballroom.

Once she’s gone again, his gaze once again drifts down to where Rey still sits. 

“As I was saying,” he says, in a much quieter voice than the one he was using with his mother, “I am happy to bow out of this.”

Suddenly, an idea comes to her. “I… don’t think that’s necessary.”

“Isn’t it?”

Rey shakes her head “No. I mean--I need this job,” Rey says, very quietly. “My business is doing well, and it’s growing. But it’s just starting out. Planning your parents’ vow renewal…” She trails off, shakes her head. “I need this job,” she says again.

“Exactly.”

“And  _ you  _ need to be here for your parents.” As she speaks, the details of her plan begin to fall into place, one after another. All at once, Rey makes up her mind. 

“Rey--”

“I can control myself, Ben,” she says, hoping her tone conveys a confidence she absolutely does not feel. “I know that we are nothing to each other but… but accidental soulmates, and that we will never  _ be _ anything more to each other than that.” She pauses. “I know that you’re engaged. But I’m a professional.”

Ben lets out a huff of frustration. “I never suggested you were anything less. But--”

“What I mean is, it’s not like we have to be around each other constantly.” Slowly, tentatively, Rey pushes herself up into a standing position. Even when she’s wearing heels Ben still towers above her. The top of her head only comes up to the level of his full, plush mouth. But she refuses to think about that right now. She pushes the errant thought aside, will  _ not  _ imagine what it would feel like if he just… leaned forward and tenderly kissed her forehead.

“I think we can handle being in the same room a few times over the next few months, don’t you?” she adds, just for something to say. 

Ben lets out a long breath, his gaze going distant. He swallows; Rey’s eyes follow the movement of his Adam’s apple as it bobs in his throat.

“Fine,” he says at length. He drags a shaky hand through his hair. “Yes. You’re right. We’re both adults. And it’ll be fine.”

“Of course it will.”

Ben closes his eyes, sighing. “And as much as I hate that they’re going through with this stupid ceremony, and as much as I don’t want anything to do with it… I suppose my backing out of it  _ would _ cause more drama than it’s worth.” He says the words in a dull monotone. Like a man who’s resigned himself to a horrible fate. His eyes flick to hers. “And you need this job.”

Rey nods. “It’s going to be fine,” she says again, in an authoritative voice she normally reserves for panicking brides, not sure if she’s trying to convince Ben of this fact or herself. 

“It’s… going to be fine,” Ben repeats. But the look he gives her is one of pure heat, and Rey has never been less convinced something was going to be  _ fine  _ in her life.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on twitter at [jeenonamit](https://twitter.com/jeenonamit/)!  
> Or on tumblr, also at [jeenonamit](https://jeenonamit.tumblr.com/).


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